Infidelity

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693987

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Said with astonishing naivete...

Sometimes, there is more of value than just whether your spouse will fuck you or not. There may be kids... property, or families that you do not choose to break up.

There may be other circumstances... My grandmother took to her bed and refused to get out of it for the last 15 years of her life.
My grandfather loved her and took care of her, as she became increasingly incapacitated by being bedridden... he cleaned up after her, applied poultices to her bedsores, and never once failed to be there for her in every way...

And there was a widow woman who lived a few blocks away who he visited occasionally for the human touch and intimacy that his wife could no longer offer.

Was that a 'wrong' ? or was that the only way he could carve a less despairing path thru the fate that life had thrown at him, without the means to significantly alter that fate?

Was that widow a home wrecker? or just one more tender soul cast adrift and alone yet still yearning for a whisper of passion... for a man's loving caress?

Your absolutism is the myopia of having simply not lived enough, or suffered enough, to know the broad scope of sorrows that human beings face over deep time.

To me, if the relationship is so good, so worth, or however you want to describe it... then what is preventing you from being honest, and actually discussing and getting permission for it?

In my eyes, life is too short to be in a relationship and not have your needs met. That could be getting approval to go elsewhere for certain things and never discussing it with your main squeeze, other than having obtained the approval. I get that not everybody wants to know that their partner does x, y, or z with someone else.

Yes, I can understand what your grandfather did, but if the scenario arose with me, I would damn well discuss it with my partner. Even if I were the one bedridden/etc, part of loving and caring for my sweetie would be giving that permission, thinking of the difficulties going on not just for myself but for my sweetie. Yes, it would probably fuck me up some, at least for a bit to think of my partner going to someone else, but I would rather know things than have something done behind my back.

That being said, I know not everyone is as much about brutal honesty as I am. I've been the person who was cheated on before. This, in spite of on a few occasions asking that former partner if their needs were met, if they had things they wanted to try, other people they wanted to fuck, etc. They still decided to take the scumbag route, in spite of a blatantly obvious willingness on my part to adjust parameters of our relationship.

So for my $0.02, I don't think it's naive to say if something is damaged/not working/needs aren't met, to fix it or move on. There are many ways to fix something.
 
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950483

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Said with astonishing naivete...

Sometimes, there is more of value than just whether your spouse will fuck you or not. There may be kids... property, or families that you do not choose to break up.

There may be other circumstances... My grandmother took to her bed and refused to get out of it for the last 15 years of her life.
My grandfather loved her and took care of her, as she became increasingly incapacitated by being bedridden... he cleaned up after her, applied poultices to her bedsores, and never once failed to be there for her in every way...

And there was a widow woman who lived a few blocks away who he visited occasionally for the human touch and intimacy that his wife could no longer offer.

Was that a 'wrong' ? or was that the only way he could carve a less despairing path thru the fate that life had thrown at him, without the means to significantly alter that fate?

Was that widow a home wrecker? or just one more tender soul cast adrift and alone yet still yearning for a whisper of passion... for a man's loving caress?

Your absolutism is the myopia of having simply not lived enough, or suffered enough, to know the broad scope of sorrows that human beings face over deep time.
Phil. I quite often agree with your comments, and even when I don't, I think that you usually make a few good points. You're a total fucking narcissist though :eek::D. Quite frankly, it makes me wonder about myself :confused:.

People have unrealistic expectations of relationships in general in my opinion, and humans really don't seem to be so great at monogamy. I've never been in a relationship where I could even picture never having sex with anyone else ever again. But under no circumstances is it okay to have sex with someone else and lie about it. You do not have the right to make decisions for someone else about their body or about what they need to know.

Your grandfather needed to either proceed with your grandmother's blessing, or even without her blessing, but it was not okay to lie to her. Had she known, perhaps she would have become angry enough to get out of bed.

Infidelity is something that society needs to face up to, and develope a better understanding of, rather than clinging to the taboos and moral values of ancient times.

Fuck you spellcheck, you're an idiot.
 
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Phil Ayesho

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To me, if the relationship is so good, so worth, or however you want to describe it... then what is preventing you from being honest, and actually discussing and getting permission for it?

In my eyes, life is too short to be in a relationship and not have your needs met. That could be getting approval to go elsewhere for certain things and never discussing it with your main squeeze, other than having obtained the approval. I get that not everybody wants to know that their partner does x, y, or z with someone else.

Yes, I can understand what your grandfather did, but if the scenario arose with me, I would damn well discuss it with my partner. Even if I were the one bedridden/etc, part of loving and caring for my sweetie would be giving that permission, thinking of the difficulties going on not just for myself but for my sweetie. Yes, it would probably fuck me up some, at least for a bit to think of my partner going to someone else, but I would rather know things than have something done behind my back.

That being said, I know not everyone is as much about brutal honesty as I am. I've been the person who was cheated on before. This, in spite of on a few occasions asking that former partner if their needs were met, if they had things they wanted to try, other people they wanted to fuck, etc. They still decided to take the scumbag route, in spite of a blatantly obvious willingness on my part to adjust parameters of our relationship.

So for my $0.02, I don't think it's naive to say if something is damaged/not working/needs aren't met, to fix it or move on. There are many ways to fix something.

You are a product of your self indulgent era.

You weren't born in 1897 in Portugal. You never emigrated to a new country and met your wife as a pregnant woman abandoned by her husband on the boat to america... you didn't have to see your wife's first child, the son you adopted, hauled out of the river by his foot when he drowned at age 7... or try to help your wife, who did not speak english, and was suffering from inconsolable grief as she was hauled away to a sanitarium to be 'treated' for Hysteria- by being given a hysterectomy.
You didn't have to figure out a way to deal with your wife's depression at going thru menopause at 27- in an age before hormone treatments - her loss of interest, first in sex, and then in life itself, nor try to talk a life-long and devout catholic in the era before vatican II to turn a blind eye to a dalliance.
You weren't there, growing all your family's food thru the crushing poverty of the depression, raising rabbits for meat, and having to work two shifts, thankful for the jobs, and yet still be there for your increasingly incapable and distant wife.

You weren't faced with the choice of concealing the the thing you did to enable yourself to cope, or being "honest" with the woman who had had so much stripped from her and be the one to strip this last, final illusion of being your one and only from a life increasingly isolated from everyone except for you, her husband. The man who stood by her and endured the unendurable.

You can sit on your high horse of hard won freedoms, and cultural revolutions and stamp your pretty little foot and make Demands about how YOU should be served only what you wish...

But you just reveal your own selfish conceits about what is acceptable or not in the hard grind of life between two broken and shattered souls... just trying to make it to a peaceful end.


I don't disagree that a lot of infidelity is simple self indulgence.
But I have lived too long and seen too much to imagine that I know all the tracks thru the frailties of the human heart.

It can not be reduced to black and white. To either or.

Sometimes the cheater is a cad. And sometimes the cheated on deserve it.
Sometimes its a stupid mistake to try and recapture some sense of being attractive to someone else.
Sometimes its something you did once, because you were raised to think a certain way, and forever after regretted, a changed person.
Sometimes its just animal heat.
And sometimes its the kindest, most discrete way you can stick it out with someone you dearly love and who needs you to stick it out.
Sometimes you talk it out and make sure they are okay with it.

While I agree with you in pure principle... I would break it off if I wanted another.
Or tough it out and stay true.

In practice, no one who hasn't remained faithful for 60 years has any right to shake their finger on the absolute belief that the cheater has always done wrong.

Betrayal comes in so many forms... it can be impossible to tell who broke faith first.

and we are all just mortal... facing our fears and advancing years in increasingly less able bodies and coming sometime to very hard realizations at how shatteringly finite everything truly is.

I had a woman who stopped letting me touch her at 47, after 17 years of devotion. For three years I remained faithful and tried to win her affections back, tried to get her to see a counselor together or even doctor...
And she expected fidelity... to what? That she could make the unilateral decision that i would never again feel an impassioned embrace?... a sweetly erotic kiss? never again see a woman look at me with desire? That she could exercise choice over sexuality for us both?

And so I did the proper thing, by your and my lights... I separated from her without ever having touched another...

And where am I now? Alone, at 59? where is the woman who i might have spent my declining years with, after 30 plus years of sweet togetherness and youthful passions... burned out, but those memories there to carry us thru?

The intolerance of absolutes has not served me well. It made the woman i love unwilling to bend on my needs. and me unwilling to be a cheater and so I left.

And I have my honor and my sense of having done right... and that is all I have on a cold night.
There will be No one sitting beside me in the doctor's office to comfort me when I must face the hard news we all must someday face. No one for whom I can be that comfort.


I'm sorry. My grandfather was a better man, not in spite but because of his dalliance.

He never lost sight of what mattered. He wasn't in it for just himself. And I will never know if my grandmother secretly knew of what he was up to, and simple pretended to not know... because she loved him and knew he was there in all the ways that really mattered.

Wisdom comes- often late- and at such terrible cost.
 
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You are a product of your self indulgent era.

You weren't born in 1897 in Portugal. You never emigrated to a new country and met your wife as a pregnant woman abandoned by her husband on the boat to america... you didn't have to see your wife's first child, the son you adopted, hauled out of the river by his foot when he drowned at age 7... or try to help your wife, who did not speak english, and was suffering from inconsolable grief as she was hauled away to a sanitarium to be 'treated' for Hysteria- by being given a hysterectomy.
You didn't have to figure out a way to deal with your wife's depression at going thru menopause at 27- in an age before hormone treatments - her loss of interest, first in sex, and then in life itself, nor try to talk a life-long and devout catholic in the era before vatican II to turn a blind eye to a dalliance.
You weren't there, growing all your family's food thru the crushing poverty of the depression, raising rabbits for meat, and having to work two shifts, thankful for the jobs, and yet still be there for your increasingly incapable and distant wife.

You weren't faced with the choice of concealing the the thing you did to enable yourself to cope, or being "honest" with the woman who had had so much stripped from her and be the one to strip this last, final illusion of being your one and only from a life increasingly isolated from everyone except for you, her husband. The man who stood by her and endured the unendurable.

You can sit on your high horse of hard won freedoms, and cultural revolutions and stamp your pretty little foot and make Demands about how YOU should be served only what you wish...

But you just reveal your own selfish conceits about what is acceptable or not in the hard grind of life between two broken and shattered souls... just trying to make it to a peaceful end.


I don't disagree that a lot of infidelity is simple self indulgence.
But I have lived too long and seen too much to imagine that I know all the tracks thru the frailties of the human heart.

It can not be reduced to black and white. To either or.

Sometimes the cheater is a cad. And sometimes the cheated on deserve it.
Sometimes its a stupid mistake to try and recapture some sense of being attractive to someone else.
Sometimes its something you did once, because you were raised to think a certain way, and forever after regretted, a changed person.
Sometimes its just animal heat.
And sometimes its the kindest, most discrete way you can stick it out with someone you dearly love and who needs you to stick it out.
Sometimes you talk it out and make sure they are okay with it.

While I agree with you in pure principle... I would break it off if I wanted another.
Or tough it out and stay true.

In practice, no one who hasn't remained faithful for 60 years has any right to shake their finger on the absolute belief that the cheater has always done wrong.

Betrayal comes in so many forms... it can be impossible to tell who broke faith first.

and we are all just mortal... facing our fears and advancing years in increasingly less able bodies and coming sometime to very hard realizations at how shatteringly finite everything truly is.

I had a woman who stopped letting me touch her at 47, after 17 years of devotion. For three years I remained faithful and tried to win her affections back, tried to get her to see a counselor together or even doctor...
And she expected fidelity... to what? That she could make the unilateral decision that i would never again feel an impassioned embrace?... a sweetly erotic kiss? never again see a woman look at me with desire? That she could exercise choice over sexuality for us both?

And so I did the proper thing, by your and my lights... I separated from her without ever having touched another...

And where am I now? Alone, at 59? where is the woman who i might have spent my declining years with, after 30 plus years of sweet togetherness and youthful passions... burned out, but those memories there to carry us thru?

The intolerance of absolutes has not served me well. It made the woman i love unwilling to bend on my needs. and me unwilling to be a cheater and so I left.

And I have my honor and my sense of having done right... and that is all I have on a cold night.
There will be No one sitting beside me in the doctor's office to comfort me when I must face the hard news we all must someday face. No one for whom I can be that comfort.


I'm sorry. My grandfather was a better man, not in spite but because of his dalliance.

He never lost sight of what mattered. He wasn't in it for just himself. And I will never know if my grandmother secretly knew of what he was up to, and simple pretended to not know... because she loved him and knew he was there in all the ways that really mattered.

Wisdom comes- often late- and at such terrible cost.

Let me just start by saying you have the audacity to say I'm a product of a self-indulgent era, without knowing hardly a whit about me. You then proceed to point out how I wasn't born in 1897 in Portugal. I find it exceedingly unlikely you were born in 1897, whether in Portugal or outside of it. If the person you describe is someone you know, that still doesn't make it that good of an arguing point to talk down to me, just because I'm NOT the above. You weren't either.

You can say that I can "sit on my high horse of hard won freedoms" etc, but much of your post is pretty straw man all in all. Yes, what you described in your post is a crappy circumstance. That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not I was born in 1897, or your assumption that I'm self-indulgent. It's self-indulgent that I try to make sure a partner has their needs met, even if it's not with me? Really? I could consider that pretty selfless and loving.

I made no absolutes or assumptions about you as a person. I spoke plainly and carefully with phrases like "To me" right at the very beginning of my post. So spare ME your assumptions and putting of words into my mouth.

I stand by my words of how TO ME, life is too short for lies. Life is too short for underhanded or shady behavior.
 

Phil Ayesho

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Let me just start by saying you have the audacity to say I'm a product of a self-indulgent era, without knowing hardly a whit about me. You then proceed to point out how I wasn't born in 1897 in Portugal. I find it exceedingly unlikely you were born in 1897, whether in Portugal or outside of it. If the person you describe is someone you know, that still doesn't make it that good of an arguing point to talk down to me, just because I'm NOT the above. You weren't either.

You can say that I can "sit on my high horse of hard won freedoms" etc, but much of your post is pretty straw man all in all. Yes, what you described in your post is a crappy circumstance. That doesn't have any bearing on whether or not I was born in 1897, or your assumption that I'm self-indulgent. It's self-indulgent that I try to make sure a partner has their needs met, even if it's not with me? Really? I could consider that pretty selfless and loving.

I made no absolutes or assumptions about you as a person. I spoke plainly and carefully with phrases like "To me" right at the very beginning of my post. So spare ME your assumptions and putting of words into my mouth.

I stand by my words of how TO ME, life is too short for lies. Life is too short for underhanded or shady behavior.


Well, you clearly did not read that post very closely.

You missed my admission that I agree with your perspective. That I, too, am a product of the same self indulgent era. That I, too, would ( and on this site often have ) advised anyone to be honest with their mate in all regards... and to leave if it can't be worked out before straying.

And you missed my own self doubt about how well that attitude... yours and mine... has served me. That taking that stand has meant I am alone and facing impending old age and solitude... wherein it might have been a sweeter end to have been less absolute and figured out some accommodation that enabled me to stick it out with a woman I still loved, in spite of her abandonment of our bed.

The story was a true one, of my grandfather's life. and it was meant to illustrate just One example of how far from black and white a life can get, especially the lives of those born long before you and I, who suffered privations, and social pressures that you and I can not imagine in our cushy modern and liberalized lives.

If you feel insulted, I apologize... i was insulting myself as much as anyone else.
Questioning the very notion we more modern people have that love be strictly on our own terms and there is a line in the sand.

It is, after all, just sand.

Sometimes... it might be better to just scuff it away and say, meh... I forgive. I understand. I might have done the same.

I admit, I don't really know anymore.


read that post again... those are real tears.
 
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Phil Ayesho

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And you really think one partner has the right to make a decision that affects both of their lives?

I'm not going to stoop down to ad hominem attacks. If what you believe is right for you, so be it.

No, I don't.
But when you choose to leave, that decision affects both your lives, too... and often with far more devastating effect.
I had a woman decide all on her own that my sex life was over at age 50... that affected both our lives, too.

I am simply pointing out that there is more to this than a binary choice between right and wrong.

And its not ad hominem to suggest that someone may be naive about how tough life can get- I know I was naive about it, myself. most of my life.
I believed in the "right thing", too.

I am still naive in some ways.... it seems I still have many hard lesson yet to learn. Many things I held to be true, undermined by the unfolding of the lives of myself and those around me.

wish me luck.
 
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Well, you clearly did not read that post very closely.

You missed my admission that I agree with your perspective. That I, too, am a product of the same self indulgent era. That I, too, would ( and on this site often have ) advised anyone to be honest with their mate in all regards... and to leave if it can't be worked out before straying.

And you missed my own self doubt about how well that attitude... yours and mine... has served me. That taking that stand has meant I am alone and facing impending old age and solitude... wherein it might have been a sweeter end to have been less absolute and figured out some accommodation that enabled me to stick it out with a woman I still loved, in spite of her abandonment of our bed.

The story was a true one, of my grandfather's life. and it was meant to illustrate just One example of how far from black and white a life can get, especially the lives of those born long before you and I, who suffered privations, and social pressures that you and I can not imagine in our cushy modern and liberalized lives.

If you feel insulted, I apologize... i was insulting myself as much as anyone else.
Questioning the very notion we more modern people have that love be strictly on our own terms and there is a line in the sand.

It is, after all, just sand.

Sometimes... it might be better to just scuff it away and say, meh... I forgive. I understand. I might have done the same.

I admit, I don't really know anymore.


read that post again... those are real tears.
 
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No, I don't.
But when you choose to leave, that decision affects both your lives, too... and often with far more devastating effect.
I had a woman decide all on her own that my sex life was over at age 50... that affected both our lives, too.

I am simply pointing out that there is more to this than a binary choice between right and wrong.

And its not ad hominem to suggest that someone may be naive about how tough life can get- I know I was naive about it, myself. most of my life.
I believed in the "right thing", too.

I am still naive in some ways.... it seems I till have many hard lesson yet to learn. Many things I held to be true, undermined by the unfolding of the lives of myself and those around me.

wish me luck.

Perhaps it is your writing style, but you have rubbed a few people the wrong way by coming off as being rather condescending.

Your Ex was open with you about not wanting sex and that allowed you to make a choice about what you wanted to do with your life. That is the difference. Having an ongoing affair is being deceptive and not allowing the other to make a choice based on the truth.

If you had chosen the path of infidelity, you may have continued quite happily until you got caught, but what about your partner? Would it have been in her best interest to stick it out in a relationship built on a lie? You would have been stealing years of her life that she could have spent with someone else who would have been more suited to her.

I don't deny finding love is hard and being single has it's difficulties. Unfortunately many people choose a loveless marriage in exchange for the security it brings.

I do hope you will meet someone that makes you happy. Good luck!
 

Phil Ayesho

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Perhaps it is your writing style, but you have rubbed a few people the wrong way by coming off as being rather condescending.

I can cop to that.
I often write in a manner meant to provoke.... but I am not doing so maliciously.... Its actually just the way I look at the world. I do this to myself all the time... I'll think I know what I think about something, and suddenly, unbidden, I will consider a wildly contrasting argument and debate myself over whether my thoughts are valid.
And this often comes out in how I write.

Fade wrote something that I strongly agreed with... I always had... but in the light of my last failure at relationship and my current situation I suddenly had to challenge myself... Where had that attitude gotten me? I did the right thing, and still ended up alone?

My grandfather came to mind because all thru my younger years I had thought he was totally wrong to do as he did... and so writing out his story was not me lecturing Fade... it was me re-examining a narrative I thought I knew from a different perspective.

Writing 'you are a product of your own self indulgent era', in the context of a story about a man born over a hundred years ago, was actually an accusation I was internally leveling at myself. At all of us who pontificate about how relationship OUGHT to be.

I probably could have been clearer about the fact that I had always supported and endorsed Fade's own position... but then I look at this forum as an ongoing salon of dialogs, and I guess I just assume most folks hereabouts are familiar with my position on doing right by your mate.


A lot of folks, however, are reactive readers. That might sound condescending, but its just an observation. And reactive readers often fail to pick up that a writer is voicing their own internal struggle with how they think or feel about a subject.

They are reading as if they are being attacked by anything that disagrees with their own thoughts... but argument and discourse that challenges others and ourselves is the highest level of intellectual activity that human beings are capable of. Challenging ideas, even our own, is what has made the world a more humane place. And given rise to all the technology we rely upon.

And yes... it can be uncomfortable to have one's ideas challenged.
I do this to myself way more than I do it here. But I have become comfortable with challenge.

That post ended with a comment about wisdom coming at terrible cost.
If you read that post as my own soliloquy, that was directed at me... as my own realization that my own absolutism over what is right and wrong in relationship had left me shattered alone on the shore of a desert island.
That is the terrible cost I paid.

-At 35 I divorced my first wife over her drinking. My father in law tried to advise me that breaking up the marriage was not going to lead to anything but temporary relief. That all of life with any mate is a struggle of accommodations and compromise... and that it was far better to stay together , and build a history of mutual support and a secure financial position so that, in old age, when you are too tired and too wise to get upset of trivial things, you will be there for each other because you have simply always been there for each other.
Making a HABIT of love and support...

And I was so sure he was wrong.
That I deserved to have a wife who was not an alcoholic.
And part of me still believes I was right in that belief.

And yet, all the couples I know who have stood the test of deep time have had to forgive and understand, and let go of so much... and what they have left is something of deep value. They are there for each other. That an affair doesn't really matter.

A friend of mine met his future wife when she was 14 and he was 16. He was a real cad and in the months leading up to their marriage he had been caught cheating on her.
But she went thru with the marriage anyway.
And on the night of her Bachelorette party, she had sex with the male stripper.

He found out about it and he was devastated.
And I laughed at him and told him he was sooo lucky. He asked how he was lucky...

And I said he was lucky to finally understand what it felt like to be cheated on, so he could have empathy for his mate, and maybe be less likely to do that again.
And he was lucky that he was entering into the marriage with BOTH of them being equally guilty. That his fiancé had put their relationship back into balance... that they were now EVEN. Neither could take the position of moral superiority and so maybe they could both truly let the infidelities go.

And y'know what? They are still together, 29 years later. With five children and one of the strongest marriages I have ever known.

And the folks I know who were less able to forgive, less willing to compromise... like me... have all been thru one or more divorces.

Forgiveness wins in the long run.
 
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Obviously infidelity is not an addiction in textbook terms. I used drug addiction as a simile because there are many aspects that are similar.

I don't think there is any justification for infidelity. It does nothing to fix the problem and at best it prolongs a bad situation or at the very least makes it worse.

To say the partner is at fault for ones infidelity is essentially victim shaming. Where is the line drawn on punishing a partner?

You are emphasizing my point. You are claiming the spouse as a victim and thus my comment is victim-shaming. I am saying that is far too simple and generalized. A relationship takes two parties to work. If one, either one, abandons the relationship (physically and/or emotionally), then the consequences will follow.

One person may just go into routine and ignore the other.
One person may ask for a divorce.
One person may start looking for sex elsewhere.
One person may just up and leave.

Once the communication stops and one person abandons the work needed to keep things going, that is it... something will happen.

I'm not blaming the spouse, because that is far too easy. It may be both people's fault, or just one. 'Infidelity' is more than a simple 'affair' or 'extramarital' incident.

Instead, I think both people should look carefully and decide...what is it they want and if they can't get it from the relationship (or won't give it to each other) ... end it and move on.